


Episode 51: The Delegates pt 1

by PitoyaPTx



Series: Clan Meso'a [51]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Clan, Mandalorian Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23563690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitoyaPTx/pseuds/PitoyaPTx
Summary: "I'm not making a decision until we're all in agreement about this." ~XotolicueWhat's a diplomatic meeting without raised voices and sharpened spears?
Series: Clan Meso'a [51]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1261364
Kudos: 1





	Episode 51: The Delegates pt 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the inconsistent spelling of names. I think Google keeps autocorrecting some and not others :/

On the sixth level of the Toch’akjah, the group left the stairs and made their way around to an entrance on the left side. They traveled down a hallway past the greenery covered fountain, the medbay, and a spiral staircase leading to lower levels, until they reached the arched doorway to the council chambers. The torch-lit room spanned half the length of the pyramid at that level and featured seventeen rows of stone benches, a large holotable-laden with datapads, manuscripts, groupings of mugs, and various small knives- with long range com capabilities, and three large windows that overlooked the west side of the city. From the walls hung woven tapestries of the founding Alor and their Crusaders, each tribe’s Patron animal, a Jiiya, and the Bes’ede be Tahast. Various suits of armor were displayed on stands around the room, from prototypes of the clan’s armor to replicas of the Neo Crusader’s blues. Weapons decorated support pillars, shields covered cornices; ornate rugs with claw-shaped tears carved paths between the rows up towards the deus.   
Nine identical, u-shaped seats circled the large holotable, each with a woven blanket in their faction’s colors draped across them: black-and-brown for the Brood of Tusks, teal-and-orange for the Drowned Suns, teal-and-red for the Storm Harpies, black-and-red for the Winged Serpents, red-and-silver for the Clan Alor, white-and-blue for the Prime Minister, black-and-blue for Doaxa’s northern representative, black-and-gold for a group most assumed (and hoped) would not be in attendance, and orange-and-white for the Chibala. The floor around the chairs was worn and sunken in some places where delegates had stood and argued with one another over the centuries. Scattered around the holotable were slit-like gouges in the soft stone.   
With little more than a nod or a raised chin to one another, the assembly took their seats and waited for Alor Yaun to speak. Koucitesh took her seat on the left end of the holotable directly across from the head of the Chibala, Ba’atuk’s brother Naxic. For a Chibala he was a grizzly sight, with the tip of one of his horns missing and a chunk of his upper lip peeled away to bear a set of slightly yellowed teeth. He had his sister’s golden eyes and her habit of glaring when deep in thought; Koucitesh had grown accustomed to this visage during council meetings but he was particularly bad tempered today as evident when Palouta had entered the room. The indigenous male-with a ragged mohawk, pronounced nose, square jaw, and head always kept upturnt as if trying not to smell anyone shorter than himself- was never on Naxic’s good side. Now that his sister had been injured by a Jiiya “trained” by Palouta’s best beastmasters, Naxic’s sour mood had hit a new level. Seated between Palouta and Dedel, Falkit surveyed the room with keen interest. The teal-green Nautolan seemed to delight in the unspoken tension between his fellow Alor as evident of his slight grin and steepled fingers. Dedel, noticing this, simply sighed and shook his head, momentarily making eye contact with Doaxa who smiled sympathetically. Beside Doaxa, an elegantly dressed Rattataki with a high-neck black dress embroidered with gold flowers sat delicately poised on her chair with the woven blanket around her shoulders like a shrug. She whispered and chuckled conspiratorially with Doaxa, but interacted with no one else. Even when Palouta addressed her directly, commenting as he always did on how little she shared with the Clan (or rather with him) about the goings on with the North, she shrugged and turned up her nose to spite him.   
Niri and Jecho sat in the first row of benches set aside for the Brood’s representatives and did their best to not draw attention to themselves. Aviila slipped behind Barsurl and Meiri close to the wall where there was a patch of heavy shadow. 

“You know our words?” asked Kuntz, rummaging in a side pouch.   
Cara shook her head, cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he produced a translator. He powered it on and handed it to her.   
“I’m learning,” she said in defense of his unspoken inquiry. He nodded.   
In front of them, on an ornate stone table carved to look like a cross-legged man holding up a stone slab, Kuntz set a holoprojector and tuned it until the nine chairs and their occupants were projected before them. Cara’s eyes immediately trained on Koucitesh as the first face she recognized.   
“Palouta, Falkit, Dedel, Alor Yaun, Doaxa, Teya, and Naxic,” said Kuntz, pointing from figure to figure.   
Cara recognized them as names she’d heard, but other than seeing Alor Yaun for the first time a few hours ago, the others were foreign to her.   
“Nasheek, that’s Ba’atuk’s brother?” she asked.   
Kuntz nodded, “He is angry. Believes Palouta is responsible.”   
“For Ba’atuk’s injury?”  
Kuntz nodded.   
“Do you think he is?”  
He nodded again.   
Cara fidgeted with her sleeve. His matter of factness, while not unlike his son, made Cara uneasy. She wasn’t used to people who weren’t open with their emotions, especially anger.   
“I met your son,” she offered, hoping to change the tone of their conversation, “He helped me learn some mando’a.”   
Another nod. Cara frowned, but decided not to speak again and instead focus on the projection. Alor Yaun had just sat up and looked as though he was going to begin speaking until he abruptly paused. Cara couldn’t see what he was looking at, as the other half of the room wasn’t included in the projection, but then she heard it: the sound of clawed shoes clicking against stone. Looking up to Kuntz, she noticed him staring off back down the plaza towards the sculpture garden where a trio was expeditiously walking towards the Toch’akjah. Cara had just spied him when he stood up and got between her and them, effectively blocking her from view. She tried to look around him, glimpsing for a moment three figures with large, fan-like headdresses and shawl-capes streaking by. In the ambient light from the pergola, the edges of their headdresses glittered with gold.   
“Who are they?” she asked quietly, still trying to make out what they looked like as they took the stairs two at a time.   
Kuntz said nothing, but he didn’t have to. Five minutes later, Alor Yaun addressed them:   
“[You emerge to hear our words],” he said as one of them sat down in the vacant chair between Teya and Naxic.   
The newcomer, whose helm was that of a roaring Jiiya but whose face was partially obscured by a mask with animalistic features, smiled a wide, toothy smile at him turned just enough to display two large, crossed eyes on either side of her headdress. Cara felt herself recoil.   
“[I smelt war],” said the masked woman, still smiling greedily, “[It is time to feed again].”   
Around the table, many shifted uncomfortably but none more than Teya. She struck Cara as wholly unaffiliated with the Clan and therefore not used to the newcomer’s brand of… zeal? Cara wasn’t sure what it meant to “sense war” or to “hunger again”, but judging by the discomfort of the other Alor, she was about to find out.   
“[Never mind the reason, you are here. We will begin],” Xoto continued, a hint of annoyance behind his usual calm cadence. 

Across Meso’kaan, on personal holocoms and public projections, broadcasts changed to the face of the Alor, of Xotolicue and his missing tendril. Those still milling about in cantinas or in the streets, found places to sit and watch the delegation. Even the projectors on the moon tuned in to the Toch’akjah. Cara was hoping Kuntz would at least allow her to hear what was being said, to prepare her for what she’d be walking into, but the moment Palouta interrupted whatever Alor Yaun would have said, Kuntz cut the sound and returned to scanning the plaza. Cara had no choice but to sigh, pull her knees up to her chest, and watch the silent debate unfold. Palouta and Koucitesh seemed to be the most vocal, going back and forth with one another while the newcomer cackled. Falkit and Dedel said very little, although the Nautolan threw in a few comments to the annoyance of both Palouta and Naxic. Doaxa and Teya asked and posed questions, the Prime Minister appearing far more concerned than the Rattataki. At one point, a Togruta Cara didn’t recognize came into frame from behind Doaxa to point an accusatory finger at Palouta. Kuntz continued to stand for the majority of the silent broadcast, but after thirty minutes he leaned forward and un-muted it in time for Alor Yaun to say:   
“[So we are in agreement?]”   
A round of nods, a few reluctant. He sighed, then stared directly at the projector.   
“[Kuntz, if you would.]”  
The older warrior reached across again and cut the feed, then held out his hand to her.   
“It’s time?” she asked, knowing there was no hiding how nervous she was.   
He nodded.  
“Do I have a choice?”  
He shook his head.   
She looked up at his outstretched hand, but didn’t take it right away.   
“You’re nervous,” he said in that same matter of fact tone from earlier.   
She nodded, rocking slightly away from the back of the bench. He made no indication that her answer affected him in any way, continuing to hold his hand out. There wasn’t much else to do but to take it and get up, but Cara didn’t want to yet. The anxiety she’d felt standing before Koucitesh and her husband multiplied by whomever else was there in the council room… doing the mental math made her feel sick. The urge to bolt past Kuntz and hide somewhere until Jecho or Aviila found her was tempting, but she knew there was no getting past him. If Ba’atuk trusted him as her right hand (or left hand?), there was nothing Cara could do. Setting her internal struggle aside, she took a deep breath, let her legs down and brushed the wrinkles out of her lap, then took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled up from the bench. 

The walk up to the sixth level was long and silent. Cara had never walked up this many stairs in her life. Tatooine wasn’t known for its staircases...or large structures. She’d heard about Hutt palaces with grand staircases and towering architecture but throughout her whole life the only stairs she’d ever taken were the few up to the trade bazaar, and even then there were maybe only fifteen at maximum. And though she was used to long walks in the heat, and knew how to keep herself from panting too much, this was by far the highest Cara had been off the ground outside of a ship or shuttle and the change in altitude made her heart race. Although that could be because the closer they came to the top the more the breeze threatened to blow them back down to the plaza. She did her best not to look down at it, although the thought of plummeting to the bottom would have distracted her, she kept her eyes forward to make sure she didn’t miss a step. After a while, the monotony of slab after slab was enough to keep her nerves at bay. She began to count the stairs under her breath as she took them one at a time. Kuntz was always two steps ahead of her and showed no sign of slowing down. Either she was fast or he was moving at half-speed. Cara didn’t bother asking. On the sixth level, he guided her around through a side door -with a cross-eyed face glaring down at her from the lintel- and down a stone hallway lined with torches. The hall dumped them out into a large room made of red stone with a fountain in the center. Again, this planet’s abundance of water wasn’t lost on Cara and she found herself wanting to linger by it in the cool spray emanating from it, but Kuntz took her hand and hurried her along. As they passed a large plant that Cara mistook for a piece of sculpted stone gurgled and belched out an odd smelling gas, quickening her pace.   
They passed a brightly lit room behind glass that looked like a medbay, judging by a line of bacta containers set up against the wall. Cara wondered if that’s where Ba’atuk was being treated but didn’t have enough time to process it when they quickly turned down another corridor and raced along it to an arched doorway. Kuntz’s longer legs meant that only Cara’s ability to balance kept him from literally dragging her behind him, so she was glad when they stopped and she could catch her breath. As she bent low, panting, she noticed the floor was now loosely covered in worn fabric. At some point it must have been a rug but after who knows how long, the clawed-foot traffic had reduced it to ribbons. Standing up and stretching backwards, she saw that the doorway was made by neatly cut stones leading up to another cross-eyed face on the lintel. The visage was disturbing, as disturbing as the one outside, and she quickly averted her eyes. Besides, there was far more to see in the open council room ahead of her...


End file.
